George Browne

In a recording career that lasted more three decades, George Browne, who has died aged 86, cut dozens of singles and several albums, but it was in 1953 that he put the Trinidadian voice on the map when, as Young Tiger, he recorded a calypso, I Was There, based on his observations on the Queen's coronation of that year.

This celebration of participation by the Windrush generation in the event ensured Browne his place in history. Yet the singer was not, as some now claim, a calypsonian. He sang calypsos because he was Trinidadian - an important distinction - and only became a singer through chance.

Born Edric Browne in Port of Spain, he mixed with fishermen as a child, and heard Shango and Shouting - music and ritual rooted in African spiritual practice - and imbibed a wide repertoire. But he became bookish, finding his milieu in the library of an intellectual, Richard E Braithwaite. The work of early black writers and activists inspired him and he became George E Browne, in homage to the man who showed him his history.

In 1940 he joined a Norwegian oil tanker as a mess-boy. He travelled to Australasia, signing off in Scotland in 1941 with fellow crewman John Clarke, and a year's pay. At a Glasgow dance hall, other Trinidadians encouraged them to move to London, where Soho's black old-timers showed them the ropes.

With Clarke, he sang for his supper in a 1942 minstrel show (eight weeks at Central Hall, Westminster), then in the chorus of a revival of Show Boat (1943). After forming a more progressive Caribbean vocal group, he did rocking renditions of US hits, leading to broadcasts and Ensa appearances.

Postwar, he learned to play double-bass to work with guitarist Lauderic Caton (obituary, February 17 1999) and moved into Mayfair. At the Orchid Room he met royalty, greeting the Duke of Edinburgh with an impromptu calypso tribute, and was reprimanded by management for his audacity.

In 1947-48 Browne co-founded the Three Just Men, whose members would include Bermuda-born Ken Gordon, the uncle of newsreader Moira Stuart, and persuaded Duke Ellington to be photographed with them. Armed with this publicity, the trio toured Europe and north Africa and then in 1949 played a Marseilles festival, sharing train, stage and hours of philosophical banter with Charlie Parker.

Playing a solo season in Biarritz that year, Browne met Dorothy, a Mancunian who became his partner. In Paris, he was painted by South African artist and musician Gerard Sekoto, and was befriended by black American musicians; Kenny Clarke and Sidney Bechet liked his rich, vibrant baritone.

Back in Britain in the early 1950s, he joined Humphrey Lyttelton's experiments with Caribbean rhythms. Browne was a modernist, in love with bebop, despite his Calypso Be, another Young Tiger recording that wittily summarised the calypso/bebop schism that had emerged in West Indian circles.

His friendship with Caton, an unconventional figure whom he credited as his mentor and guru, was significant. Caton helped burnish Browne's primitive guitar and for two years they shared a flat, the younger man adopting many of his fellow Trinidadian's aesthetic and philosophical beliefs. They worked together at Soho's underground Club du Faubourg, a residency that led Browne to society work and made him a fixture at Oxford and Cambridge university balls in that decade. He entertained at Lord Beaverbrook's parties and at the Hurlingham Club, and also worked with the legendary Jamaican entrepreneur L Hugh Scotland, who booked London's Caribbean and African entertainers for more than three decades. In 1957, he formed a choir, the Humming Birds.

A favourite at Mayfair's Blue Angel, he also popularised the calypso in the primaeval British rock'n'roll film Rock You Sinners (1957), and sung the credits for BBC TV's Port Calypso show.

One of his proudest moments was playing guitar for Paul Robeson at a concert in Brixton in 1958. Browne was blessed with the warm, resonant voice which was popular in pre-independence west Africa, and numbered prominent nationalists among his admirers - including the progressive, Obafemi Awolowo, who asked him to write the Nigerian national anthem (he didn't). The then Gold Coast imported 20,000 copies of his pre-independence Freedom for Ghana.

In the 1960s he acted at the National Theatre and the Theatre Royal, Stratford. In 1966 he played Christ in a passion play at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Senegal.

He left music in 1970 and married Liesel Steffens, the ex-wife of Scotland. They opened a restaurant and health club in Welbeck Street in the West End, but when new property owners forced them out, they moved to the US and opened restaurants in Florida and California. They separated in 1986, and Browne spent the next three years studying computers and accountancy.

He returned, settled in Croydon, and performed at local "Mexican nights". In retirement, in a high-rise block, he sat, surrounded by computers, playing the stock market for modest returns.

Browne's material over the years was topical and commercial, but it was as the calypsonian Young Tiger that he appealed latterly, when the re-release of his Coronation calypso put him back in the limelight. He was pleasantly surprised by the attention - "miraculous, really" - and as new and old admirers flocked to Croydon to pay their respects, they met a thoughtful man, of incredible humbleness and generosity of spirit.

He is survived by Liesel, their daughter Annette and his stepson, Hugh.

· George (Edric) Browne, singer, guitarist and actor, born May 4 1920; died March 23 2007